


The Box and the Pond

by Hutchfiction



Category: Actor RPF, Josh Hutcherson - Fandom
Genre: Chance Meetings, Espionage, F/M, The Beatles - Freeform, but there are quite a few, not as many beatles references as there could have been, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:32:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hutchfiction/pseuds/Hutchfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The corner of my mouth twitches in annoyance.  Lisa Q. reaches across the table and pats my arm sympathetically.  “It’ll get better, Nell.  Trust me. “</p><p>This, coming from a girl who lives in an actual house on a graffiti-less street named after a fucking tropical fruit.</p><p>I smile weakly and mutter to myself, “Or it’ll just stay shitty.”</p><p>--</p><p>A story about the girl who ran,<br/>A boy who never had to,</p><p>And quite a bit of espionage</p><p>--</p><p>After almost 2 years, I'm finally giving my tumblr Josh Hutcherson fanfic a permanent home. Enjoy, folks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Box and the Pond

“So, Nelly Pond! Tell me, how are you liking L.A. so far?” 

 

Melissa Quinn, or, as she likes to call herself, “Lisa Q.” has lived here in L.A. her entire life and is one of those people who thinks that everyone who visits L.A. should absolutely love it.  So as a result, she berates me about my L.A. experiences every single time she passes my office, and, seeing as my office is on the way to the bathroom, the break room, and the copier/printer, I get almost no work done during the day.  And here I thought being a graphic designer would mean not as much co-worker interaction.  I wasn’t expecting anything like Lisa Q.

Lisa Q. drives me absolutely insane.  But, nevertheless, here I sit, in a tiny, uncomfortable metal chair across from Lisa fucking Q. on my lunch break outside Café Lunch, the coffee bar/deli below our offices that tries too hard to be modern, being drilled about how much I’ve been enjoying Los Angeles, California.

 

My name is Nell Rigby Pond, I am twenty-two years old, and I have been living in L.A. for exactly two weeks and three days.

Yes, Nell is short for Eleanor, and yes, my parents were huge Beatles fans.

 

I’ve never considered myself to be a necessarily pretty girl.  My hair is dirty blonde and curly, but not the kind of corkscrew, bouncy curls you see on girls like Shirley Temple.  No, my hair is the long, tangled, wavy kind of curly that looks messy no matter how hard I try to tame it.  My dad used to refer to it as “a rat’s nest”.  Eventually I stopped trying to tame it with straighteners and curling irons, and just let it be.  I usually just end up wearing it down and tucked hopelessly behind my ears, which are rather large and crooked and stick out in an almost Dumbo-style manor.  My facial features, which are pretty average, are hidden underneath a blanket of freckles.  My eyes, depending on what I am wearing, are usually some shade of light brown, and are rimmed by almost obnoxiously long lashes that are constantly getting stuck in them.

Thanks to my half-Italian mother, my skin is a light olive tone, however thanks to my pale Irish father, I inherited a large array of freckles, mostly on my face, that I despise.  Also thanks to my Irish father, I am rather short for my age.  I have a thin, yet muscular build, courtesy of the many, many years I have put into playing soccer, which I immediately gave up so that I could pursue graphic design in L.A.  

 

Although the sun is out and shining, it’s a bit chilly out today, so this morning I opted for an oversized black sweater that sort of hangs off my shoulders and reaches about mid-thigh, accompanied by a pair of old, paint stained straight-leg jeans with the cuffs rolled up to mid calf.  The black makes my eyes seem almost honey-colored brown. 

I squint across the tiny table at Lisa Q, who has been staring at me expectantly waiting for me to answer her question.  I plaster on a wide, fake smile and say with as much enthusiasm I can muster, “It’s really starting to grow on me!”

Her face falls a little.  I mentally kick myself for not being a better actress.

 

I want to tell her that I love L.A., I really do.  I want to tell her that I haven’t had any problems since I got here, and that everyone has been “just SO nice!”  I want to tell her that I found a cheap, amazing, clean apartment in a good part of town and that my job was going great.

I really want to be able to gush about how amazing L.A. has been, but I really am an awful liar.

 

Because on the contrary, I’m convinced L.A. is actually trying to scare me off. 

 

It all started with the apartment.  Since I was busy with finals and tying up loose ends at home, I had to hire a realtor.  I got online and found the cheapest one, a man named Jimmy Keen, not realizing that I’d be getting as little as what I paid for. 

It took almost two weeks for him to find anything, and by that time I was almost done with school and was starting to get desperate.  I applied for a job at the Trent & Lyle graphic design firm, and was hired as a resident graphic designer.  The only problem was that they needed me to start as soon as I finished up with school in December.  I was a fifth year senior and was ready to get the hell out of the classroom and into the real world.

My eagerness made me rash.  After two weeks of waiting for some sort of housing prospect, I finally got a call from Jimmy Keen saying he found “the absolute  _perfect_  place!”  He described it as a “quaint, roomy loft/studio apartment located near L.A.’s hotspots and businesses”.  He also said the neighborhood had a really rich art scene with a lot of “younger people” like myself.

 

I should have spent more money on a better realtor. 

 

I first started to get the feeling Jimmy Keen had been full of shit when I turned onto passed the first, second, and third graffiti-covered abandoned buildings with small, suspicious looking groups of “youths” loitering outside them.  I resisted the urge to slap my palm to my forehead and instead opted for profanity.

  
“Jimmy mother-fucking Keen.”

  
These must be the young people Jimmy described.  And, as I studied the various gang signs and profanities graffitied over most of the buildings, I started to laugh. 

 _  
Ah, this must be the rich art scene_.

  
My taxi driver looked back at me warily in his rearview mirror.

When the taxi finally pulled up alongside the U-Haul parked outside my new apartment, I was already prepared for the horrors to come.  I had to walk through an alley to get to the door to a dimly lit stairwell, seeing as the apartment happened to be smack on top of a greasy looking Thai restaurant.  I walked up the creaky stairs and put my key in the rusty lock.  I swung open the door to find an old, air-conditioner-less loft with a greenish-yellow tiled floor and robins-egg blue wallpaper with white lace trim, riddled with unidentifiable stains.  Needless to say, I still haven’t unpacked in hopes that I’ll magically stumble upon a cheap, nice apartment in a good part of town with normal wallpaper.

 

After I got “settled in” (and by that I mean after I moved a few boxes around and plopped a mattress on the floor of the loft) I decided to go exploring.  I needed to buy a few fans, and maybe think about buying some paint.  I did not yet understand that I was living in a bad neighborhood, and therefore proceeded to get mugged by a teenager with his underwear showing.  He looked pretty nervous, and I could tell the gun he was holding was a water gun.  I could see he was trying to show off for his friends who were jeering at us from across the street, calling him insulting names.  Peer pressure sucks, so I decided to humor him and gave him my wallet, which unbeknownst to him, I keep nothing but old gift cards and chump change.  He seemed satisfied and I quickly ran back into my apartment mourning nothing but the loss of fifty-two pennies and a Barnes-N-Noble gift card that I knew for a fact still had four dollars on it.  I had big plans for that gift card.

  
Since that day, I carry around a can of mace just in case an actual adult, or at least a teenage gangster with bigger balls and a real gun tries to mug me.

 

The corner of my mouth twitches in annoyance.  Lisa Q. reaches across the table and pats my arm sympathetically.  “It’ll get better, Nell.  Trust me. “

 

_This coming from a girl who lives in an actual house on a graffiti-less street named after a fucking tropical fruit._

 

I smile weakly and mutter to myself, “Or it’ll just stay shitty.”

  
Thankfully, Lisa Q. was too distracted by our waiter bringing our lunch to hear me.  Once we both have our food, me a turkey on sourdough and her a strawberry smoothie and fries, she starts to gush.

  
“Let me tell you, my favorite part about living in L.A. has to be all of the celebrities!  This one time, I was waiting on a cab outside of this club called “LaRu”, when Kim freaking Kardashian almost tripped over my foot!”

  
I keep smiling and nodding as she continues to talk about other celebrity sightings, and I have to wonder just how much longer I can pretend to look interested.

 

All of a sudden, as if on cue, a ridiculous crowd of screaming photographers start coming towards us on the sidewalk next to the café, and Lisa Q. turns around excitedly to watch.  I repress a chuckle as I immediately think of a stampede of animals.  As they get closer, I see that they are following a guy gesturing wildly as he screams angrily at someone on his phone.  He looks to be about my age, his plain white shirt glaring in the sun and his eyes shielded by some very expensive looking sunglasses.  He angrily hangs up the phone and shoves it in his back pocket, the swift motion causing his sunglasses to fly off and get trampled by a photographer.  He doesn’t dare to stop though, because the paparazzi go absolutely crazy, shoving cameras in his face and screaming questions at him. 

  
The whole scene makes me feel uneasy.  Disgusted.  The last thing I would want if I were in a bad mood would be people yelling in my face and taking picture of me.  Like if you gave cameras to fifty Lisa Q.’s on heroine.  I shudder at the thought.

  
The group is pretty close now, about to pass the café on the sidewalk when I recognize him. 

  
The Jaw, the hair, the short, stocky build.

 

“Oh my god!  Nell!  That’s Josh Hutcherson from The Hunger Games!”

  
“Huh.” I reply rather unenthusiastically. To be honest, I feel a little awkward being forced to witness someone’s privacy being ignored, so it’s hard for me to be excited that I’m seeing my first celebrity in L.A.

  
All of a sudden, a idea pops into my head.

  
When I was about twelve or thirteen, I used to have to go to the mall after school to wait for my older sister to get off work so she could drive us home.  After I finished all of my homework, I would people watch.  I’d sit for hours at my little table on the edge of the food court watching people pass by, chatting with friends or walking alone, I would make up stories about who they were, where they were going, where they were coming from. 

  
Usually, I’d just sit quietly and watch.  But sometimes, on rare occasions, I would leave people notes.

  
I first got the idea when I noticed a weary looking woman who looked extremely stressed out tugging a wailing kid by the wrist.  I ripped a tiny slip of paper from my notebook, scribbled a note and slipped it into her purse as she passed my table.

 

_You need a drink.  
_ _-Pond_

 

I figured that would be the right thing to say.  My mom always said it when she got too stressed out.  No one noticed.  They were so used to the girl sitting silently at the tiny table on the edge of the food court that she became invisible. 

I became invisible.

 

  
As he and the herd of photographers come closer, I take my slightly crumpled napkin off the table and fumble around my purse for a pen.  

  
“What are you doing?”  Lisa Q. asks me suspiciously before turning around in her chair to wave at the oncoming hoard of photographers.  Oh, and Josh Hutcherson.

  
I tear off a thin strip and quickly scribble something down.

 

_Maybe if you walk in some sort of zigzag formation, it will disorient them…_

_-Pond_

 

Just as Josh is about to pass us, I casually, very discretely stuff the torn napkin into his front pocket.  He lifts his gaze and our eyes briefly lock.  Not romantically or anything like that, he doesn’t move in slow motion or anything like what you see in movies.  It’s more like we caught each other zoning out on the other’s face.  We both stare at each other curiously until I break eye contact by looking down at my plate as he passes.  He does not stop.  He does not check his pockets.

  
Thankfully, Lisa Q. missed the whole thing, so I didn’t have to be bombarded with questions.  We finish our lunch and head back to the office.  My first celebrity encounter and I didn’t even get an autograph.  What a shame.  Or at least, according to Lisa Q. it was. 

  
All I got was a passing glance. However, according to a later account of the day’s events by Lisa Q., he did turn around for a brief moment before continuing on his way.

 

But that’s probably just Lisa Q. being dramatic, right?


End file.
